Happy, happy.

[ctom]

No wind at 4 this morning so a friend and I hooked up the boat and hit the big river for a couple hours of fun fishing. A real mixed bag today. Walleyes [all short], sauger, crappies, perch [to 13"] and a sheephead , which I did not have the honors of catching, all saw the carpeting today.

Nothing wanted plastic at all. Even bass refused it. Leeches and crawlers got the job done though and its white meat for dinner tonight. We were using very large leeches and the crappies sure did like like them. Sauger too. 

We had the water pretty well to ourselves until about 8 and then the first flush of boats showed up. At nine the idiots appeared out of no-where, but our trip, short by design, was nearing its end so we wrapped it up before tempers got up. Man, the water was nice without wind for a change. Big changes are coming though. With all the rain thats fallen in the western part of the watershed and again in watersheds in Wisconsin that feed the big river an 8 foot rish is supposed to be coming by Tuesday or Weds and the rise starts in earnest tomorrow. I don't think we could have squeaked in a better 3 hours of dynamite fishing if we had wanted to.

Ya'll have a Great Memorial Day weekend!

[BareKnuckleJigs]

Awesome Day, Sir!

[pjmcla]

C-tom  -  Did you try to add an attractant to a plastic bait that they usually like that was a leech "flavor"?  This is something we try when we see the fish on the graph and they only seem to want live bait ( if we have it, or catch it ).  After the first couple come in the boat; we start the "you fish live bait & I'll see if they will eat xxxx  attractant " ( shad, crayfish, herring, etc. attractant ).   On crappie we have found we can fish the exact set up and the attractant makes all the difference.   

[ctom]

I tried a half dozen different scents and scented plastics to see if they'd sucker in but no go.  I'm not a huge scent fan but the fella I fish wiith is and he couldn't get a take either.

Crappies....if they're around a person can catch them on just about anything. I had a mid-summer trolling area that was great for sumo walleyes. I'd troll #15 rapala minnow floater on a weighted line to catch these big walleyes and it wasn't uncommon to have a crappie get to the boat on one of those hog baits. Of course the crappies that did hit this big minnow were not you garden variety of crappies either.